Within only 2 years of the havoc that was France's revolution it was able to fend off the combined might of Europe's monarchies
Seeing the fragility of modern post-regime change states like Iraq (especially the Iraqi Army's defeat and dissolution before isis) it seems unfathomable that France would have been able to reorganize so effectively that it did not only fend off the coalition armies, but defeat them and conquer more territory
What was the pivotal factor? was it the revolution's popular support that gave it the morale and swiftness it needed to reorganize? Effective leadership?(of course napolean) how did they do it?
Joseph Cruz
bump
Robert Moore
A large part of it was that the French army remained largely as it was during the ancien regieme, one of the largest and most powerful in Europe. They remained mostly supported and organized throughout the chaos. Iraqi forces on the other hand become disorganized and had ridiculously low morale.
Hudson Gutierrez
The leadership of the Jacobins saved revolutionary France. Carnot was a member of the Committee for Public Safety, known as the organizer of victory. Facing invasion on all side by monarchists, the CfPS called for a levee en masse, an entire nation in arms to fight for the Republic. The People responded to the call. Committing the industry of France to equip and supply an army was an immense task, but Lazare Carnot and the Committee were up to the effort. Within a year, in a pre-industrial era, the French defeated the coalition against them. Liberte. Fraternite. Egalite.
Aaron Parker
This
The first thing the Americans did was to disband the Iraqi army, which meant that all the experienced officers and generals were fired.
Those same generals turned up in leadership positions with the jihadists, so it is no wonder they were able to wage a succesful insurgency against the western puppet regime
Henry Reed
Robespierre, the biggest hypocrite and psudointellectual to ever exist.
Aaron Reyes
Why didn't the french army put down the rebellion? I've always wondered this, I mean, they were loyal to the monarchy were they not?
Daniel Baker
The monarch wasn't corrupt enough to turn the guns on their own people.
Nolan Rodriguez
Even when there were angry mobs preparing to to storm Versailles or whatever it was called?
John Johnson
>they were loyal to the monarchy were they not?
Paris was not and no one else really gave a shit
Julian Powell
>Even when there were angry mobs preparing to to storm Versailles or whatever it was called? *snores loudly* HUH WHAT? *revolutionaries filling the roim* GUARDS! GUARDS! HELP
Daniel Lopez
hey, you never did provide sources for your claim of 10,000-15,000 jacobins killed/executed in the white terror.
Brody Baker
It was after the Flight to Varennes which caused the king's popularity to plummet. Including the army, which largely felt that the king betrayed them.
Dominic Long
nope. Towards the French people, he was pacifist to the extreme point that it put his own life and eventually the security of the monarchy in peril. Basically he thought, bless his heart, that if he showed the French people that he didn't intended to hurt them and wanted to work with them, that the violence would stop. Silly.
Aaron Cook
The invasion of Versailles was 2 years before Varennes. You're thinking of the two invasions of the Tuileries, which in any case happened a year after Varennes.
Thomas Cox
Sorry. Georges Lefebvre in his two volume history , he states that the White terror killed at least as many as in the Red Terror. Peter McPhee, in his just published by Yale title "Liberty of Death:the French Revolution " states on pp 288-289, that as many as 30,000 were murdered during the White terror.
So I lowballed it, actually.
But there are widely varying figures, due to that the White terror was not official policy of Thermidor, whereas with the CfPS it was. The committee kept much better records.
It should be noted that the great majority of deaths during the 3+ years of red/white terror occurred outside of Paris, where figures are harder to come by.
So all figures all estimates.
I tire of this ceaseless posts about what ideology has killed more people. What is the point? All of us have blood on our hands.
Oliver Ramirez
Because the French Revolution was a mistake. Louie did nothing wrong.
Caleb Rodriguez
Prove your point.
I cannot find such an attitude in any of the titles I have read on the Great French Revolution.
His intellect was powerful and sharp. The last thing Robespierre was, of all things, a hypocrite.
The Incorruptible was not an indecisive man.
Robert Jones
>believe in liberty or die I rest my case. The >Great >French >Revolution Was neither great, nor fench, nor a revolution.
Logan Gonzalez
The Great French Revolution was one of the brilliant events in all of human history.
Louis XVI was a lazy boor who did nothing for "his" people.
Nobles and clergy had their own legal status seperate from the third estate. Privilege, meaning private law, was ancien regime legal cornerstone.
The common man was a virtual serf to his lord, who squeezed every last sou possible from his "property".
Like many revolutions, it's initial phases were lead by intellectuals, and later by the nascent middle class.
Isaiah Green
Idiot. Would you prefer "be a slave" instead???? Enjoy your shackles.
Prove it wasn't French. Prove it wasn't a revolution.
You are poorly informed on this subject, which I have studied since my youth.
Leo Young
>Mfw a Jacoboo posts near me >Mfw he asserts that the Jacobins didn't fuck the revolution into the dirt with their obsession over removing the King and his ministers, their political factionalism in the Legislative and National Assemblies, and being directly (though not individually) responsible for creating the white terror with their CfPS retardation >Jacobins also responsible for declaring the war against Austria in the first place
Mass Levee saved the revolution, but not the country. "Saved" is a strong word - more like 'did what they had to do to fix their fuckups'. Most components of Germany - Saxony and Prussia, for instance - had bloodless revolutions before or after, or revolutions characterised by peaceful reforms rather than protests, lynch mobs and street bloodshed.
The country descended into violence and the White Terror anyway. The fact that the revolution even consumed the Jacobins (and their precursor MUH PEOPLE POWER parisian supporters) after a time, proving that the only thing they succeeded in doing was making it more violent.
Tyler Perez
But where are those figures coming from? How did they come up with them? What primary sources? Who are they including as jacobins killed during the white terror?
James Bailey
>louis xvi >did nothing
Yep constant reforms and unusual amounts of charity and going along with every single common sense reform (many of which he tried to push himself bit couldn't because Parlement of paris) 1789 onwards sure is nothing
Juan Parker
We don't call it great ourselves, as one should always be weary of a product that needs "deluxe" written on it to sell. Though the French Revolution was a Revolution and (yes, angloboue) it was French. But nice attempt to steal Rousseau's word like they were some anglo's
Hunter Parker
You're entirely manifested by a ruinous ideology. In so much that you attach "Great" to your petty and failure of the "French revolution".
Easton Jenkins
One cannot reign innocently, you idiot. Every king is a rebel and an usurper.
Asher Barnes
Where are the broofs?
Joseph Lee
Mcphee says in that book:
>In all, up to 30,000 'terrorists' may have been murdered during the 'White Terror,' almost as many as were executed during the Terror itself.
But, what is his source for that figure? Is he only including the executions? Is he including murders, and if so is he only including murders with contemporary evidence relating them to the White Terror reaction? etc
Jeremiah Stewart
Population. People tend to forget that France was a giant in terms of population at that point in time, and was only overtaken by Germany (or the areas of Germany) in the nineteenth century.
Pic related for ants.
Landon Hughes
A monarch's power amounts only to the power the people expect him to have : they obey accordingly to this. The power thus lies with the people, and they give it away, which means it belongs to them. The king who takes it is a rebel against the rightful order of things in which the owners of the power use it by and for themselves, and an usurper as he pretends to be the rightful sovereign.
Xavier Martinez
You implied all kingships were this way, contrarian.
Isaiah Bell
Yes. Maybe I should have excluded powerless figureheads.
Andrew Hughes
So you're absolutely wrong then.
Jeremiah Flores
Yes. You pedant.
Elijah Garcia
That Robesperg quote is very similar to Barry Goldwaters Does the casualty list for the Red Terror also include the mini civil wars or just those sentence by the CfPS? Jacaboos BTFO
Jack Hughes
It must include the civil war casualties
Noah Campbell
>those dips during the world wars
Dominic Robinson
>fend off
But France started the war.
Xavier Kelly
But those officers and generals were absolute shit.
Grayson Jackson
This along with the fate of Nicholas II proves you can't be Mr. Nice Guy when dealing with revolutionaries. It's just naivity of the highest order unless you're a masochist. You HAVE to be the tyrant they think you are.
Jaxson Cox
You really do. There are so many moments Louis XVI could have saved not just the monarchy, but the lives of his entire family save the daughter who was lucky enough to survive, but because he was so insistent on never using physical force against the people... welp.
Levi Hall
There is an alternative : abdicate and go play away your wealth in some German spa town. Or if you want to half-assed reformist, just plan out your escape routes carefully.
Easton Mitchell
Let me guess, you turned into an apologist for serfdom just because of one image on /pol/ right? You'll grow out of it.
Leo Cox
>abdicate >knowingly abandon your people, whom you firmly believe God wants you to protect and guide, to a government that has no respect for laws, liberty, or religion
would never have done it
Jaxson Foster
Note how Maistre was dead right about Russia, 100 years before it happened.
Noah Baker
>sparing the life of the usurper of the sovereignty, which you firmly believe lies in the nation, and that of his would-be heirs could never happen.
Jayden Lopez
I have never been to /pol/, but it seams like you know so much about it.
Isaiah Ramirez
Last time I checked, France was still a republic. Sorry if that cheeses you off, you pathetic monarchist, or whatever sad set of ideas you're attached to.
We live in a post-monarchy world, thanks to the people's revolutionary spirit.
Go crawl into your mom's womb, so that people like me can't hurt your brain.
Daniel Nelson
No, the figures include deaths ordered by the CfPS in Paris, deaths of Royalist in the Vendee, and executions/murders in the rest of France. The figure for total deaths is around 41,000 for the Red Terror.
If by mini civil wars, you mean the vendeans uprisings, those went on even into the napoleonic era. The revolutionaries and the emperor both ruthlessly put down the royalist/papist rebellion.
Austin Sullivan
If you only use figures from the executions (and therefore only government-approved deaths, not war casualties, civilian and otherwise, or mob deaths) then the White Terror has less victims than the Red Terror.
Alexander Miller
>The People responded to the call.
Except the ones who didn't.
Josiah Thomas
Bertrand de Jouvenel argues that revolutions such as the French or the Russian ones do not desire to restrain or destroy tyrannies as much as to substitute a weak tyrant for a stronger one.
The Jacobins, for example, did nothing more that finish the work that the monarchy had began with Philip Augustus, and then Philip the Fair, Louis XI and specially Louis XIV continued, which was the centralization of power in Paris and the destruction of independent social authorities that could compete with the central government.
What offended common people and intellectuals about Louis XVI was that he was too weak to keep the work of Louis XIV. While the "Sun King" had crippled the aristocracy and elevated common people to high positions, gaining the support of the majority of the French populace, following kings let the aristocracy return to government, but this aristocracy that followed 50 years of absolute monarchy was incompetent, and so the whole thing went to shit.
Justin Gray
It should be noted that the "Levee en masse" was tried by Louis XIV too, such as for the Battle of Malplaquet, during the War of the Spanish Succession.
He just didn't believe it possible, he thought people would revolt against such idea (he was probably right, it's not like appeals to "the King" have the same power of mobilization as appeals to "the People", or "the Nation", like he didn't believe it possible to abolish the privileges of Church and nobility and end the Parlements.
In the end, absolute monarchy in France collapsed because it was too restrained.
Nathaniel Johnson
>What offended common people and intellectuals about Louis XVI was that he was too weak to keep the work of Louis XIV.
The common people loved Louis XVI up until Varennes, though. They viewed him as the savior of the French people for agreeing to the reforms (that were technically his, but the revolution of 1789 finally gave him the power to push them through).
Josiah White
And these ones were massacred to the last man and all was right again.
Xavier Campbell
Ah look, the pathetic 52 year old Virgin, autismus maximus, "war hero" is back. Why haven't you killed yourself yet John? >agree with me in liberty equality and fraternity >OR DIE Hilarious hypocrites.
Isaiah Bennett
WHITE GENES H I T E
G E N E S
Andrew Morgan
Because it was France.
Tyler Sanders
>If you press me to say why they won, I can say no more than it was because it was France, and because it was Albion.